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Ah. Well the Sisters don't need to worry about supporting their Orders. They've got the financial backing of the Ecclesiarchy, after all.

Just look at how decorated their vehicles are. If they can afford all of that iconography on their tanks, I don't think that they'd need to brew beers to support themselves.

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To address the thing about the number of Sisters, the issue is we're dealing with a galactic empire so massive that hundreds of worlds are lost and found every day.

And while the Space Marines have a number of reasons/excuses to get around such issues (surgical strikes, worth more than their number, deploying with other military forces, ect), Sisters aren't noted for such things.

Do I think we need the Millions of Trillions of members like the Guard? No. But a few million Adeptus Sororitas (like 100 million or less) is not an unreasonable number. Especially with the sheer number of what they do and whom they support. Do they need to be everywhere? Of course not, but to not have enough of them to handle the full load of their duties (which is what we basically have now) is an issue in my mind.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Troike wrote:
Ah. Well the Sisters don't need to worry about supporting their Orders. They've got the financial backing of the Ecclesiarchy, after all.

Just look at how decorated their vehicles are. If they can afford all of that iconography on their tanks, I don't think that they'd need to brew beers to support themselves.


True, but we're also dealing with a galaxy spanning religion that while all carrying the same name, varies, sometimes drastically, from planet to planet and system to system. Given the sheer number of worlds out there you can pretty much bet there is an order of the Ecclesiarchy who makes booze somewhere.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2013/09/23 01:44:17


 
   
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Tunneling Trygon






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ClockworkZion wrote:To address the thing about the number of Sisters, the issue is we're dealing with a galactic empire so massive that hundreds of worlds are lost and found every day.

And while the Space Marines have a number of reasons/excuses to get around such issues (surgical strikes, worth more than their number, deploying with other military forces, ect), Sisters aren't noted for such things.


Exactly. It's like having fewer SEALs than SAS personnel... if the USA were several billion times larger than it currently is. Space Marines face this issue - lack of numbers - but have measures, as you said, to counteract it. Even minorities should, by all means, outnumber the supposed strength of the Sororitas - including Planetary Governors, Inquisitors, Death Cult Assassins, etc, in a setting that is as extremely large as the Imperium of Man. I would be looking more at 20k+ as being the numbers of each individual convent of Sororitas, not their numbers as a whole! I'm not talking Imperial Guard numbers, here. Even a few million would do. Remember, just because they sound similar doesn't mean that a million and a billion are close in number.

I'm sure there is a lot of really silly fluff from 2E that can't be taken seriously in the current setting.

Hollowman wrote:
 Frozen Ocean wrote:
I am enjoying the implication that humans must give in to our urges or else we, I don't know, explode.

Also, why has nobody made comparisons to, you know, nuns? That's essentially what Sororitas are - except worse. Nuns don't take their faith so seriously that even the slightest deviation can be cause for death.

To succumb to physical desires and act in a manner against the faith is to have one's faith lacking. They police themselves - to allow such desires to enter one's mind is heretical, is enough for the Sister in question to run to her superior and plead for punishment that she may be resolved of her impurity. To fully act upon these desires? Oh dear.
!


I didn't say we have to give in to urges, I said some portion almost certainly would. Nuns were one of the primary things i was thinking of when I initially suggested some Sisters would engage in proscribed activities, just as many nuns do. I'm also not sure how clear it is that what the catholic church believes is sinful is in line with what the Imperium considers unpure. Sex and drinking are certainly distractions, but so is watching television - I'm not sure what the cultu of the emperor has to say about sex and drugs in general.


You miss the point. Nuns, certainly, are capable of deviating from the values of their beliefs. Nuns, however, are nowhere near as extremist as the Sororitas. If pride in victory is punishable by death, somehow I don't think that boozing it up would be permitted. Also, I doubt that the Sororitas watch television.

Lynata wrote:
Hollowman wrote:I'd be more inclined to say Space marines have a set of genes that make them far more behaviorally limited than proper humans. Something not far off from sociopathy.
Okay, but that's just your personal guess. As far as GW is concerned, this limited behaviour is a result of their monastic lifestyle. The Sisters are just better at that, so they are more limited, and so they are less likely to suffer corruption. It all adds up.


Exactly. Space Marines are certainly capable of having material urges - otherwise, they would be incapable of turning to Chaos as readily as they do. Space Marines hold back temptation through discipline and force of will and yet, they fall to Chaos in droves. The Sisters, on the other hand, do not. Regardless of whether or not Astartes are 'behaviorally limited' (which I don't believe they are), the Sisters surpass them immeasurably in terms of resisting temptation.

As Lynata said, you are ascribing this "magic bullet" of indoctrination to Space Marines (that being the hypothetical alterations that render them incapable of temptation). However, it's the Marines who get tempted, not the Sisters! This is a rather big paradox. How can the "magic bullet"-equipped (supposedly) Space Marines be inferior to the "magic bullet"-less Sororitas, of which "some portion of them are going to be smart enough and curious enough to dabble", when it is the Marines who fall to Chaos regularly?

The only alternative is that the "magic bullet" is what makes them turn to Chaos, but we know that this is not true - regular humans fall to Chaos easily. Astartes fall to Chaos easily. The only alternative, then, is that the discipline and faith of a Sororitas keeps them from falling to Chaos.

The actual "magic bullet" at work in the setting is the literal brainwashing of Grey Knights, to turn them into the stalwart bastions of faith that they are. The faith, mental fortitute, and self-discipline of a Sororitas is on par with this brainwashing without any "magic bullets" involved.

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ClockworkZion wrote:And while the Space Marines have a number of reasons/excuses to get around such issues (surgical strikes, worth more than their number, deploying with other military forces, ect), Sisters aren't noted for such things.
I wouldn't agree with that...
If you think Marines are worth more than their number, then you can say the same about Sisters.
If you think Marines are deploying with other military forces, then you can say the same about Sisters.

According to GW's material, the first line of defence on Ecclesiarchal property is the Frateris Militia. These also form the core of any War of Faith, where the Sisters of Battle merely function as the symbolic spearhead, providing a solid core of elite warriors the militia can rally around (an example might be found in Canoness Carmina's report on the Gaius Point incident). Likewise, local pogroms and witch hunts tend to be instigated by the clergy whipping the planetary populace into a religious frenzy.

"Frateris Militia can be formed in a variety of ways and for varying lengths of time. A Preacher discovering a heretical cult may rouse his followers to attack the enemy and cast them out. Confessors are often followed by large entourages of fanatical Frateris, crazed zealots and pious mendicants who will carry out his orders without question and would rather die than fail their leader. Missionaries often have a following of converts accompanying them, helping to spread the word of the Imperial Cult. In desperate situation, the Deacons, Deans and other functionaries may even be armed from the secret vaults in the Imperial Shrines. When the temples are threatened, these faithful may be the only defence against an enemy cult or alien invader.
When a War of Faith is declared, thousands of Frateris Militia will assemble with the ranks of the Battle Sisters and Imperial Guard, eager to prove their dedication to the Emperor."

- 2E C:SoB

And before someone suggests that this Frateris Militia could necessitate a larger force of Battle Sisters should their religious leader go rogue, it's really not as if the Sisters would be incapable of doing those Marine-style surgical strikes as well:

"The types of operations embarked upon by the joint forces of the Ordo Hereticus and the Adepta Sororitas are often sensitive, and have at times amounted to little more than barely sanctioned assassination. The most common mission is a rapid, surgical strike against a religious group. Often the target of the attack will be a member of the Ministorum, perhaps a Cardinal or Missionary whose teachings have strayed too far from the accepted orthodoxy, forcing his excommunication. Such an individual may have a sizable following, and the Ordo will therefore expect stiff resistance to their attack. In such a situation it is imperative that the attack is carried out in secrecy. No witnesses are left alive to spread doubt, and no martyrs to the cause are allowed to inspire further rebellion."
- CJ #49

So what exactly is it that one would need huge numbers of Sisters for? Almost everything the Sisters do, the Frateris Militia does as well, just in an obviously less reliable manner, and with much larger numbers. And the Frateris Militia, unlike the Sisters, has been said to exist everywhere, even where it exists only as an ad-hoc militia that is raised as the situation demands, rather than (as is sometimes the case) a permanent, unofficial army of the local clergy. The only things that the Frateris Militia do not do are official purity sweeps and hunting down rogue Marine Chapters. For the former, the Sisters team up with the Adeptus Arbites, and the Ordo Hereticus can requisition further forces such as Inquisitorial Storm Troopers squads or even regiments of the Imperial Guard to assist, if need be. And the latter really does not occur that often that you'd constantly need entire Orders on standby.

And that is before we consider that the Adepta Sororitas is easily capable of summoning further assistance if need be - ranging from honour-bindings with the Adeptus Astartes (as we know from the 6E Space Marines Codex, specifically the recent additions to the Black Templars fluff) to the web of connections spun by the Orders Famulous:

"A Sister of one of the Orders Famulous can use her connections with the Imperial nobility to command other Imperial servants to provide her with troops. These are usually Imperial Guardsmen or Planetary Defence Force Personnel. [...]"
- Chapter Approved 2002 : Sisters of Battle

"With members in every aspect of society, the Sisterhood can maintain a close eye on the affairs of the Imperium. The Orders Famulous report on the activities of the Noble Houses, the Orders Dialogus can inform their seniors of the deals and agreements binding the Imperium together and the Orders Hospitaller witness many things unseen outside their wards. All of this makes the Adepta Sororitas a useful political as well as social tool, and with the armed might of the Orders Militant, the Sisterhood has the protection and power it needs to operate successfully."
- 2E C:SoB

tl;dr: Two things: The Minor Orders take care of local matters wherever necessary or appropriate, the Major Orders (with their larger size and mobility) are the hard-hitting troops, whose units are despatched to threatened areas of special importance to the Ecclesiarchy, or to serve as vanguard for a crusade. For clarification, what exactly is it that people believe there are supposedly too few Sisters for? Why does a number around 100k seem "too few" for what they are supposed to do and meant to represent? Especially considering the Inquisition's scepticism regarding the Ecclesiarchy amassing too much military might, and the limited space within the two primary Convents on Terra and Ophelia VII, and that even the Ecclesiarchy's obscene wealth has its limits when the Sisters of Battle are "armed with the best wargear the Imperium has to offer" (CA 2002).

Here's a thought - maybe the Imperium refrains from raising more Sisters of Battle for the same reason it refrains from raising more Chapters of Space Marines. Both the Ecclesiarchy as well as the Adeptus Astartes have in the past abused their military might and influence to plunge the Imperium into civil war. Perhaps the High Lords think that the current numbers are perfectly alright, because this has been sufficient for thousands of years and because those resources could just as well be spent elsewhere? Certainly the Ecclesiarch may argue for additional troops, but even though he is a High Lord himself there are limits to what one could dare on the political battlefield that is the Inquisition-supervised Senatorum Imperialis. I mean, it took the Ecclesiarchy 2.500 years to expand the number of Sisters in the Major Orders from 20.000 to 30.000 ...

This message was edited 4 times. Last update was at 2013/09/23 04:46:09


 
   
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Because, even by treating them exactly as Space Marines in terms of capability, they are still vastly outnumbered by Astartes - the biggest weakness of whom being their low numbers. Which is fine, because Astartes, as many have said before, not meant as a true army, not meant to wage war in the truest fashion.

It isn't vast numbers. Even a few million would be quite small, really. The galaxy is really, really, really big. Once again, they would be quite massively outnumbered by Death Cult Assassins, Planetary Governors, and quite probably Inquisitors. A million people really isn't that large of a number, not even in the context of modern-day Earth! And then the Imperium of Man is supposed to include approximately a million worlds? The setting is just too large for them to be that few.

Also, not to devalue the Sororitas, but Astartes are individually superior. All those genetic modifications don't count for nothing, after all.

me wrote:I'm sure there is a lot of really silly fluff from 2E that can't be taken seriously in the current setting.


Lynata wrote:For clarification, what exactly is it that people believe there are supposedly too few Sisters for? Why does a number around 100k seem "too few" for what they are supposed to do and meant to represent? Especially considering the Inquisition's scepticism regarding the Ecclesiarchy amassing too much military might, and the limited space within the two primary Convents on Terra and Ophelia VII


Nothing in particular. The setting is still too large! Also, there are plenty more Convents; just because those are the largest does not mean that they contain the bulk of their number.

Lynata wrote:and that even the Ecclesiarchy's obscene wealth has its limits when the Sisters of Battle are "armed with the best wargear the Imperium has to offer" (CA 2002).


Space Marines are similarly armed, if not better!

EDIT: If they operate in a manner similar to Chapters and therefore don't spread around, their numbers as-is would be reasonable for the duties they are supposed to do. However, being that size while also spread around the Imperium? Eh.


EDIT2: In response to the original post; people "defend them with fanaticism" because they are very often discarded as "-4Str Marines", which is simply unfair. Such unfairness deserves to be met with "fanaticism"!

This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2013/09/23 05:32:20


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Frozen Ocean wrote:Nothing in particular. The setting is still too large! Also, there are plenty more Convents; just because those are the largest does not mean that they contain the bulk of their number.
Well, outside the Convents Prioris and Sanctorum, there's only the Minor Orders and their local obligations. The Minor Orders generally don't seem to partake in the larger wars, specifically because they are only around ~100 Sisters large each.
But yes, the Minor Orders are also the "unknown variable" where we don't know how many there are (unlike the six Major Orders). The only thing we know is that they don't show up very often in the fluff.

Still, you say "nothing in particular" - that I can't accept. The size of a setting alone is no grounds for the size of a force. Purpose, possibilities and limitations are. Otherwise that's just like saying "a country is this large, that means they must have X special forces".

And the Sisters of Battle are not meant to wage war in the truest fashion either - because that didn't turn out so well for the Imperium back in the Age of Apostasy.

Frozen Ocean wrote:Space Marines are similarly armed, if not better!
Not better as per GW's fluff - but similar, yes, and let us not forget all those vehicles, fliers and space ships. Much more than the Sororitas would have (imho).
The Ecclesiarchy has to juggle its budget, though. Whereas the Space Marines just shove everything they have into maintaining the Chapter, the Adeptus Ministorum also needs to maintain and build all those huge cathedrals we see. And a Sister of Battle, as powerful as they are, likely has a smaller life expectancy than a Space Marine. Dying easier also means a greater loss in expensive wargear.
Still, I admit this isn't the main reason I'd see for them to be a smaller force. Just one of several. The political considerations are probably more important?

[edit] Hey, what's with the edit?

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2013/09/23 05:38:45


 
   
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 Lynata wrote:
ClockworkZion wrote:And while the Space Marines have a number of reasons/excuses to get around such issues (surgical strikes, worth more than their number, deploying with other military forces, ect), Sisters aren't noted for such things.
I wouldn't agree with that...
If you think Marines are worth more than their number, then you can say the same about Sisters.
If you think Marines are deploying with other military forces, then you can say the same about Sisters.


Marines are claimed to be worth far more than everyone else though. Sisters don't get fluff about being able to clear buildings armed with nothing more than a combat knife after all.

And while Sisters DO deploy with other armies, they don't do so more than anyone else does. Marines on the other hand show up where the fighting is the thickest, coordinate with the troops on ground and then try and take the fight to whomever is leading the enemy forces. That's a drastically different MO than the rest of the Imperium.

 Lynata wrote:
According to GW's material, the first line of defence on Ecclesiarchal property is the Frateris Militia. These also form the core of any War of Faith, where the Sisters of Battle merely function as the symbolic spearhead, providing a solid core of elite warriors the militia can rally around (an example might be found in Canoness Carmina's report on the Gaius Point incident). Likewise, local pogroms and witch hunts tend to be instigated by the clergy whipping the planetary populace into a religious frenzy.

"Frateris Militia can be formed in a variety of ways and for varying lengths of time. A Preacher discovering a heretical cult may rouse his followers to attack the enemy and cast them out. Confessors are often followed by large entourages of fanatical Frateris, crazed zealots and pious mendicants who will carry out his orders without question and would rather die than fail their leader. Missionaries often have a following of converts accompanying them, helping to spread the word of the Imperial Cult. In desperate situation, the Deacons, Deans and other functionaries may even be armed from the secret vaults in the Imperial Shrines. When the temples are threatened, these faithful may be the only defence against an enemy cult or alien invader.
When a War of Faith is declared, thousands of Frateris Militia will assemble with the ranks of the Battle Sisters and Imperial Guard, eager to prove their dedication to the Emperor."

- 2E C:SoB


They've since dropped out of all codex materials and haven't even gotten a passing reference in the last two rulebooks (they were last in the 4th ed one I don't have a copy of that kicking around so that might be shaky), so who knows how valid that is anymore? Even if you consider that, a bunch of zealous, but untrained, old men aren't exactly going to win any protracted conflicts. There is a reason the Ecclesiarchy needs the Sisters and it isn't just because they look cool.

As of the 6th Edition rulebook the Sisters are listed as "waging Wars of Faith, aiding the Inquisition, or protecting Ecclesiarchy buildings, property, and relics." which in my mind means they're at least in every system there is an important site to the Ecclesiarchy, if not in some number on every world.

 Lynata wrote:
And before someone suggests that this Frateris Militia could necessitate a larger force of Battle Sisters should their religious leader go rogue, it's really not as if the Sisters would be incapable of doing those Marine-style surgical strikes as well:

"The types of operations embarked upon by the joint forces of the Ordo Hereticus and the Adepta Sororitas are often sensitive, and have at times amounted to little more than barely sanctioned assassination. The most common mission is a rapid, surgical strike against a religious group. Often the target of the attack will be a member of the Ministorum, perhaps a Cardinal or Missionary whose teachings have strayed too far from the accepted orthodoxy, forcing his excommunication. Such an individual may have a sizable following, and the Ordo will therefore expect stiff resistance to their attack. In such a situation it is imperative that the attack is carried out in secrecy. No witnesses are left alive to spread doubt, and no martyrs to the cause are allowed to inspire further rebellion."
- CJ #49


CJ? I'm not sure what that is.

And when you add in the resources of the Inquisition just about anyone can be properly equipped to handle a surgical strike. But the Militant Orders aren't exactly equipped for that from what I see (no teleport homers, or beacons, no strike cruisers, no orbital bombardments, no vehicles specifically designed to break enemy lines/fortifications....ect).

 Lynata wrote:
So what exactly is it that one would need huge numbers of Sisters for? Almost everything the Sisters do, the Frateris Militia does as well, just in an obviously less reliable manner, and with much larger numbers. And the Frateris Militia, unlike the Sisters, has been said to exist everywhere, even where it exists only as an ad-hoc militia that is raised as the situation demands, rather than (as is sometimes the case) a permanent, unofficial army of the local clergy. The only things that the Frateris Militia do not do are official purity sweeps and hunting down rogue Marine Chapters. For the former, the Sisters team up with the Adeptus Arbites, and the Ordo Hereticus can requisition further forces such as Inquisitorial Storm Troopers squads or even regiments of the Imperial Guard to assist, if need be. And the latter really does not occur that often that you'd constantly need entire Orders on standby.


Well as I pointed out, the Frateris Militia isn't exactly someone you can rely on for anything longer than maybe a week. They're a militia, and because the Ecclesiarchy isn't allowed to keep "men under arms" (not to mention their primary focus not being combat) I highly doubt they're trained or maintained on any level that would allow them to be an effective long. Furthermore 6th Edition has explicitly stated that Sisters are now actively guarding anything and everything of importance to the Ecclesiarchy. That may not have been stated in the past, or not been explicit but it is now.

Lastly, I said a number of upwards to 100,000,000 Adeptus Sororitas not Sisters of Battle. That means 100 million members in both the Militant AND non-Militant Orders. Considering how wide reaching their orders are, and how much they have on their plate at any given time AND the vastness of the Imperium this is not an unreasonable number. For the Imperium it's not even a big number. 100 million is just a drop in a bucket. They have individual hive worlds that have more people on them than that. Heck that's smaller than the population on Earth right now.

People seem to forget just how damn BIG the Imperium is. It's so massive that they can manage to find and deliver at least 1,000 Psykers a day and still have enough left over to make Sanctioned Psykers for the Imperial Guard AND all those telepaths needed to pass messages along. It's an empire so massive that no one even knows how many people are in it and by the time we knew the data would be wrong anyways because in that time it took to tally it up a hundred worlds would be lost, a hundred more would be found, trillions of trillions of trillions of people would be born or would die, and that's not even counting in the wars, raids, Hive Fleets and so on.

100 Million Adeptus Sororitas in the context of the setting is STILL a very small, elite number, and it's a more reasonable number than "numbering tens of thousands" per major militant order and who knows how many per every other order (again, 6th Edition).

 Lynata wrote:
And that is before we consider that the Adepta Sororitas is easily capable of summoning further assistance if need be - ranging from honour-bindings with the Adeptus Astartes (as we know from the 6E Space Marines Codex, specifically the recent additions to the Black Templars fluff) to the web of connections spun by the Orders Famulous:

"A Sister of one of the Orders Famulous can use her connections with the Imperial nobility to command other Imperial servants to provide her with troops. These are usually Imperial Guardsmen or Planetary Defence Force Personnel. [...]"
- Chapter Approved 2002 : Sisters of Battle


There are still limits to what the Sororitas can pull, even through connections. And in times of crisis those resources can, and often are, stretched thin enough that the Sisters would be foolish to assume they can just pad their numbers when they deploy where ever.

 Lynata wrote:
"With members in every aspect of society, the Sisterhood can maintain a close eye on the affairs of the Imperium. The Orders Famulous report on the activities of the Noble Houses, the Orders Dialogus can inform their seniors of the deals and agreements binding the Imperium together and the Orders Hospitaller witness many things unseen outside their wards. All of this makes the Adepta Sororitas a useful political as well as social tool, and with the armed might of the Orders Militant, the Sisterhood has the protection and power it needs to operate successfully."
- 2E C:SoB

tl;dr: Two things: The Minor Orders take care of local matters wherever necessary or appropriate, the Major Orders (with their larger size and mobility) are the hard-hitting troops, whose units are despatched to threatened areas of special importance to the Ecclesiarchy, or to serve as vanguard for a crusade. For clarification, what exactly is it that people believe there are supposedly too few Sisters for? Why does a number around 100k seem "too few" for what they are supposed to do and meant to represent? Especially considering the Inquisition's scepticism regarding the Ecclesiarchy amassing too much military might, and the limited space within the two primary Convents on Terra and Ophelia VII, and that even the Ecclesiarchy's obscene wealth has its limits when the Sisters of Battle are "armed with the best wargear the Imperium has to offer" (CA 2002).


Minor Orders are not fighting orders though. And while some Sisters of Battle "retire" to them, it's safe to say that not everyone there is a seasoned soldier of any measure. It's because of this that I feel that we're stretching when we say they'd just "handle" things. And even working with someone else and having them do the heavy lifting has limits. PDFs are often barely trained at best (some worlds ARE better about it than others, but let's be honest here, a regular Guardsmen is a better fighter than they are), and the Imperial Guard can't always be summoned as they're usually found only where things are so bad that the Imperium has decided that throwing countless bodies at the problem is the most effective strategy. They can't afford their time to jump at the Sororitas every beck and call, family and diplomatic ties or not. Remember, diplomacy is a rapier, not a hammer. It's wielded with precision and wit, not used to blindly beat problems down.

 Lynata wrote:
Here's a thought - maybe the Imperium refrains from raising more Sisters of Battle for the same reason it refrains from raising more Chapters of Space Marines. Both the Ecclesiarchy as well as the Adeptus Astartes have in the past abused their military might and influence to plunge the Imperium into civil war. Perhaps the High Lords think that the current numbers are perfectly alright, because this has been sufficient for thousands of years and because those resources could just as well be spent elsewhere? Certainly the Ecclesiarch may argue for additional troops, but even though he is a High Lord himself there are limits to what one could dare on the political battlefield that is the Inquisition-supervised Senatorum Imperialis. I mean, it took the Ecclesiarchy 2.500 years to expand the number of Sisters in the Major Orders from 20.000 to 30.000 ...


During the Reign of Blood the Sisters swelled from a few hundred to over 10,000. I'm pretty sure it can be done rather easily. Furthermore the Sisters of Battle don't have any fluff suggesting that there are any limits on their numbers of any kind (just no men). They don't even have to ask the High Lords to found new Orders like the Marines do, instead a number of them are reassigned from the order their under to become a new order responsible for whatever it is their tasked with as their main mission. They are then basically added to the roster and Sisters can transfer to this order like any other, or be assigned to them based on whatever selection process there is during their training.

I think the real problem is people keep thinking of people like we do instead of how they do. The Imperium is willing to through thousands of Guardsmen at a single objective everyday and they are in no danger of ever running out. A few million, or even a billion Sororitas spread across the entire Imperium is not a big number in the scale we're talking here. And that's my problem, the writers use a scale that sounds reasonable if we were talking about real people here on Earth, but we're not. We're talking about an empire so massive that it's measured in not one, but many quadrillions.

To put that in perspective a quadrillion is a 1 followed by fifteen 0s. That looks like this: 1,000,000,000,000,000. A hundred million is 0.0001% of that. And that's just out of ONE quadrillion. The Imperium has a LOT more than one. To be safe, we'll call it a nice, reasonable 6 Quadrillion. That'd make a hundred million approximately .000000167% of that.

So no, 100 Million isn't a "lot". It's hardly a drop in the teaming ocean that is humanity in this setting but at least it's a large enough drop that could see the idea of having Sororitas in every sector and MAYBE every system as a lot more feasible than the numbers we've been seeing.

And no, I didn't run the math before this post, if I had, I would have said a hundred billion Sororitas.
   
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 Lynata wrote:
Hollowman wrote:I'd be more inclined to say Space marines have a set of genes that make them far more behaviorally limited than proper humans. Something not far off from sociopathy.
Okay, but that's just your personal guess. As far as GW is concerned, this limited behaviour is a result of their monastic lifestyle. The Sisters are just better at that, so they are more limited, and so they are less likely to suffer corruption. It all adds up.


GW fluff has made a great deal of the physiological differences between Space marines and humans, from extra organs all the way up to an inability to feel fear and many other normal emotions.

How are the Space Wolves any different? Nothing about drinking, fighting and carousing makes Space Wolves fundamentally more human - they just share a few behaviors with normal humans. My point is not that Space marines are more "pure" than SOB, but rather that SoB have a greater range of behavior and would be expected to break more often from the traditional mold. SW are all toting genes from SW prime, and their range of variation is pretty slim.

 Lynata wrote:
]Do Space Marines have the same genetic, social and experiential history as every other member of their Chapter? No. Yet you are perfectly happy to ascribe a more limited behaviour to them (even in the face of obvious exceptions such as the aforementioned Space Wolves) but not to the Sisters, whose "experiential history" is much more uniform than that of the Marines, given that unlike Astartes recruits they all grew up in a similarly controlled environment?


Marines gave a more constrained set of reactions - they don't respond the way humans do to a variety of things according to GW. The Sisters have a superior range of behavior and are more adaptable than the astartes, who are bio engineered to be a specific sort of person. Upbringing has a huge effect, but it does not make one fundamentally inhuman.

 Lynata wrote:
That is because churches and governments are perfectly happy with varying levels of social and behavioural indoctrination, as the leaders tend to come from those segments of the populace that are less in its grip and who do not see a need to change the status quo. It takes a sheperd to herd the sheep, after all. You are also dismissing the continuous rivalry between both church and government, and between different governments, which is not only a significant difference to the setting in 40k, but also has a profound effect on how much any one of these bodies would even be able to expand its indoctrination to all levels, even if it wanted to. Certainly, it has been attempted often enough in history, but always external forces have curbed the success of such measures.


It would be a lot more accurate to say internal forces curbed the success of such measures - we are terrible subjects for such things. They only work to a given level and no more. Flexible as we are, we are still driven by emotional and instinctive responses that are impossible to fully remove from a population. If you want a more malleable and easily mastered people you need to do some serious tinkering with how we fundamentally work - something that has been done with the Marines, but not the Sisters. I think you underestimate the lengths groups have gone attempting to reshape humanity to their own ends, and failed.

 Lynata wrote:
The Sisters are a monastic order, and to the Ecclesiarchy just like, say, the Dominicans or the Knights Templar are to the Catholic Church. As history has shown, the various monasteries and orders need not necessarily practice the same lifestyle as the clergy of the church. It would be an oddity, even. Part of the reason those monasteries were founded was to GET AWAY from everyday life and temptation, as opposed to the church, whose mission includes spreading the faith and tending to everyone's spiritual wellbeing (which in turn obviously requires contact with the people).


Monastic orders are hardly immune to individuals acting outside the normal strictures of the community, sometimes quite boldly. An oddity would be a huge population lacking in black sheep, free thinkers, the curious, and those who break from dogma. You can't find that anywhere from cloistered nuns to Yanomami tribes to the depths of the Taliban.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2013/09/23 07:28:29


 
   
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I think what most people who "don't get" SOB don't realize is that they're the fighting arm of the Church. That's just as big as the Imperial government. (maybe richer.) That a HUGE portion of humanity's power. So, yes, they have an army that isn't IG or SM. The religious background of the Imperium is what defines it. Such a pivotal piece of the fluff needs representation. (Which is why I really, really want a Mechanicum army.)
That's what attracted me to them, was that they represent that religious fanaticism I like about the 40k universe.
But GW does seem to ignore them and my opinion is that even if they put out a codex or supplement every week, they'd still find excuses not to do a SOB codex. Again, I'd love to be proved wrong.
As for the numbers, the GW writers have no freaking idea how large real armies are. 21,000 SOB? We couldn't hold Iraq with so few numbers, let along a whole planet...or hundreds of planets. The Red Army in WWII had over a million. Again, just one army on one planet. GW needs to multiply all their numbers by a hundred to come close to something realistic.
Also, I feel the need for more SOB fluff. So I wrote one. (for the new people.)
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/547273.page



Also, check out my history blog: Minimum Wage Historian, a fun place to check out history that often falls between the couch cushions. 
   
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Yes, it's really silly there's not an AdMech army codex at all -- Sisters at least get something.

And given the sheer sprawling size of the Imperium, and how fragmented it is, and how isolated some regions can get due to warp storms and worse, you can reasonably justify any deviation from the norm, from Sisters who get as drunk as Space Wolves or who practice ritualized prostitution as an initiation rite (it's a Book of Genesis thing) to Sisters who just assume they're all unbearably sinful by the mere fact of being human and form Minor Orders entirely composed of Repentia (didn't someone write a fandex for just this?).

BURN IT DOWN BURN IT DOWN BABY BURN IT DOWN

 Psienesis wrote:
Well, if you check out Sister Sydney's homebrew/expansion rules, you'll find all kinds of units the Sisters could have, that fit with the theme of the Sisters (as a tabletop army) perfectly well, and are damn-near-perfectly balanced.

I’m updating that fandex now & I’m eager for feedback on new home-brew units for the Sisters: Sororitas Bikers, infiltrators & Novices, tanks, flyers, characters, superheavies, Frateris Militia, and now Confessors and Battle Conclave characters
My Novice Ginevra stories start with Bolter B-Word Privileges 
   
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ClockworkZion wrote:
Minor Orders are not fighting orders though.

Yes they are. The 5e codex still describes them as "Orders Militant", and says that each of them is an "elite military force". They're not quiet retirement opportunities, they're SoBs dedicated to the military defence of something or somewhere. And if they've been set up in the first place, one would expect that they'd be very likely to face combat fairly often.

 Hollowman wrote:
but rather that SoB have a greater range of behavior and would be expected to break more often from the traditional mold.

Why? Are those years and years of hard indoctrination meaningless? And again, I'd like to point to who has the better track record at resisting Chaotic corruption. It seems that the Sororitas are the hardest to break from their mold.

 Hollowman wrote:
Marines gave a more constrained set of reactions - they don't respond the way humans do to a variety of things according to GW. The Sisters have a superior range of behavior and are more adaptable than the astartes

See, this is the problem you're having. You're still thinking of the Sisters as normal humans, and thinking that the post-human status of the Astartes makes them automatically less expressive and emotive.

 Hollowman wrote:
we are still driven by emotional and instinctive responses that are impossible to fully remove from a population.

Okay, and how does Chaotic corruption work? It latches onto those things, yes? And who has the better track record at resisting Chaos?

 Hollowman wrote:
An oddity would be a huge population lacking in black sheep

And the SoB have had a black sheep of sorts, Sister Miriya, form the James Swallow books. However, whilst she was something of a maverick, willing to go against orders, it was still all in the service of her dogmas. She still had the Sororitas mindset, being disapproving of things considered "deviant". Her every major action was still in service to the Emperor, not herself. I think that she is a far more accurate depcition of what a Sororitas "black sheep" would look like.

 SisterSydney wrote:
Yes, it's really silly there's not an AdMech army codex at all

FW is working on an AdMedch army, for what it's worth.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2013/09/23 12:25:05


Order of the Righteous Armour - 542 points so far. 
   
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 Troike wrote:
ClockworkZion wrote:
Minor Orders are not fighting orders though.

Yes they are. The 5e codex still describes them as "Orders Militant", and says that each of them is an "elite military force". They're not quiet retirement opportunities, they're SoBs dedicated to the military defence of something or somewhere. And if they've been set up in the first place, one would expect that they'd be very likely to face combat fairly often.


I apologize, it was late and I was tired. I meant to preface that with "Not all....". There are plenty of non-Militant Orders out there and the point was not all of them are essentially soldiers and that's fine, not all of them need to be, but we need to recognize that fact that when we start talking about the orders, or even the Sororitas in general about half the orders out there are in some kind of organizational support role and because of this there are a good deal of them who are not really the ones who should be in combat, and if they are, something went wrong.
   
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ClockworkZion wrote:Marines are claimed to be worth far more than everyone else though. Sisters don't get fluff about being able to clear buildings armed with nothing more than a combat knife after all.
Yet GW still said they are "equal to their brother Space Marines".
Just because it's not touted in every third sentence as is the case with the Astartes (and even there I've never seen anything about "clearing buildings with only a combat knife" in studio fluff) does not necessarily mean the Sisters as an organisation are less capable. Maybe they just need 2 Sisters to equal 1 Marine, instead of 10 Guardsmen for 1 Marine. But since the Major Orders are several times the size of an Astartes Chapter, I still see no problem here. Equal weapons and armour protection would do a lot to equalise fighting prowess, and genetical enhancements have their limitations when confronted by a cal .75 armour-piercing timed explosive charge.

ClockworkZion wrote:And while Sisters DO deploy with other armies, they don't do so more than anyone else does.
When they actually go to war? Sure they do.
Whenever they don't it's usually out of necessity (reinforcements not available or not trusted) or because the operation was deemed perfectly within their own capabilities as an independent force. The Space Marines are no different, and if need be I can deliver a number of examples of Space Marines doing lesser stuff on their own as well, such as the Iron Hands eradicating a bunch of feral tribes on Medusa IV (what a challenge for the Astartes!).

ClockworkZion wrote:They've since dropped out of all codex materials and haven't even gotten a passing reference in the last two rulebooks (they were last in the 4th ed one I don't have a copy of that kicking around so that might be shaky), so who knows how valid that is anymore?
If we'd only go with the fluff of the current edition, then the background of the Sisters of Battle consists of nothing but two pages in the Rulebook.
Fortunately, GW has always built on and added on previous fluff, so until they publish something that at least hints at the Ecclesiarchy suddenly not turning Imperial citizens into fanatical mobs anymore, I don't see why it should be discarded. Hell, the designer's notes for the 3E Codex even flat-out stated that 1E Rogue Trader fluff for the Sisters is still valid.

ClockworkZion wrote:Even if you consider that, a bunch of zealous, but untrained, old men aren't exactly going to win any protracted conflicts.
Sebastian Thor would like to have a word with you regarding the Age of Apostasy. The Space Marines and the Adeptus Mechanicus would have never opposed Vandire were it not for that "bunch of zealous but untrained old men" and the path they carved to Terra.

Zealots can come from any vocation and background, and though I'm quite sure that some of them will be "untrained old men" you'll also have men (and women) in their prime, and some of them may have even had previous experience with various weapons (be it due to their profession or the world's cultural background). In fact, the Frateris Militia can be so dangerous that the Ecclesiarchy tends to refrain from raising larger mobs outside times of dire need not because they fear the Inquisition, but because of the collateral damage these fanatics can cause. When local enforcers and PDF are unable to reliably contain these rioters, I think it's safe to say that they can be dangerous enough to serve as cannonfodder against alien incursion as well.

"A single man with faith can triumph over a legion of the faithless. Untold billions of the faithful can never be opposed."
- Sermons of Thor, volume XI Chapter IV

"One man can start a landslide with the casting of a single pebble."
- Ecclesiarch Deacis IX

ClockworkZion wrote:As of the 6th Edition rulebook the Sisters are listed as "waging Wars of Faith, aiding the Inquisition, or protecting Ecclesiarchy buildings, property, and relics." which in my mind means they're at least in every system there is an important site to the Ecclesiarchy, if not in some number on every world.
Well, we'll have to agree to disagree here. We'd see a lot more SoB in the fluff if a general task to protect Ecclesiarchy property and personnel would mean that means they actually do protect property and personnel on-site at any time. That's kind of like saying that every single town and village to the smallest five-families-hamlet has its own police or fire department just because the respective organisation's general mandate encompasses every single citizen. But that's not how it works. They respond when needed and move out to help, but that doesn't mean they have to be around anywhere and everywhere.
You're also missing the rulebook's explicit statement that sometimes it's just a single Sister standing lone vigil over a shrine.

ClockworkZion wrote:CJ? I'm not sure what that is.
And when you add in the resources of the Inquisition just about anyone can be properly equipped to handle a surgical strike. But the Militant Orders aren't exactly equipped for that from what I see (no teleport homers, or beacons, no strike cruisers, no orbital bombardments, no vehicles specifically designed to break enemy lines/fortifications....ect).
Ah, CJ is "Citadel Journal" - it used to be a magazine from GW much like White Dwarf, but with more focus on rules and tinkering rather than news. Sadly, it's no longer in print (much like the BFG magazine)... :(

And for their capabilities, Codex Imperialis mentioned the primary Convents have their own fleets, and the CJ article mentioned the Orders even keeping drop pods in storage - though they tend to break them out only when being tasked to purge a rogue Marine Chapter, which they do by "disabling it from the top down". Their Seraphim jump infantry would also come in handy when it comes to deep-striking such fortifications, or blowing holes into it via usage of melta-bombs. And then we have the Exorcist missile tank that could be deployed in a siege.
Granted, many of these abilities are (imho) limited to the Major Orders, but I would expect the Minor Orders to call in help from their maternal Ordo Maioris if, for some reason, they see themselves unable to cope with such a task. Fortunately, few cathedrals are built like a fortress, tho.

Spoiler:


I think very few 40k fans are familiar with the various toys or capabilities the Sisterhood has been associated with over the years. This is a result of GW simply not writing a lot about them, though. Most of the fluff that gets repeated over the years is the same general description we see again and again, with more specialised stuff being limited to WD and website articles or the (proper) Codex books - but who here has actually read those?

ClockworkZion wrote:Lastly, I said a number of upwards to 100,000,000 Adeptus Sororitas not Sisters of Battle. That means 100 million members in both the Militant AND non-Militant Orders.
The Liber Sororitas in WD #293 mentioned that no Non-Militant section of the Sisterhood is larger than the Militant - the largest ones such as the Orders Famulous are barely equal in number. There's a lot of smaller non-militant Orders, some of whom are just a dozen Sisters pursuing some strange task, but I don't think that those are the subject of the discussion here, apart form the sheer impossibility to quantify them.

ClockworkZion wrote:and it's a more reasonable number than "numbering tens of thousands" per major militant order and who knows how many per every other order (again, 6th Edition)
"Thousands", not tens of thousands. And I'm still saying that applying to the size of the setting is a mistake. For the Sisters of Battle - as well as for the Space Marines.
It's the very same thing. Neither army is meant to wage wars on their own, and neither army is expected to be anywhere at every time.

ClockworkZion wrote:PDFs are often barely trained at best (some worlds ARE better about it than others, but let's be honest here, a regular Guardsmen is a better fighter than they are)
The Imperial Guard is recruited out of the PDF. They don't magically turn into better fighters just because they are suddenly fighting off-world, and there are a lot of PDFs who are more elite than a lot of IG regiments - given that the latter are sometimes recruited directly from untrained farmhands or prison gangs, with the only military training they ever had being what the Commissar managed to drill into their heads in the time their transport took to arrive at the warzone they were shipped to.

ClockworkZion wrote:Furthermore the Sisters of Battle don't have any fluff suggesting that there are any limits on their numbers of any kind (just no men).
They have to be female orphans, whose parents were Imperial officials and who have been raised in the Schola Progenium from infancy, where they had to excel in both physical and mental disciplines far beyond the average, and whose bodies must be pure and free of mutation of any kind. That's a fairly long set of basic requirements right there.

And, as I've mentioned earlier, the Convents Prioris and Sanctorum can only house 15.000 Sisters tops, each. With any Minor Order offshoot being a spontaneous decision regarding a detachment of the Major Orders to remain on-site even when their original mission was already accomplished, or when it was realised that their mission would take much, much longer. The fact that the Minor Orders only started to pop up in mid M38 is a fairly important sign regarding how often that seems to happen.

ClockworkZion wrote:They don't even have to ask the High Lords to found new Orders like the Marines do
You don't know that. When the Sisters were first founded, the Inquisition called the Conclave of Nephilim to address the issue of the Ecclesiarchy suddenly having an army in spite of the Decree Passive, and it was resolved only because of that backroom deal with the Ordo Hereticus. Arguably, there's quite a lot of influential people who are sceptical regarding the relationship between the Orders Militant and the Church.


Holloman wrote:Nothing about drinking, fighting and carousing makes Space Wolves fundamentally more human - they just share a few behaviors with normal humans.
I'm fairly sure you just contradicted yourself here.

Hollowman wrote:Marines gave a more constrained set of reactions - they don't respond the way humans do to a variety of things according to GW. The Sisters have a superior range of behavior and are more adaptable than the astartes
Not according to GW.

Hollowman wrote:It would be a lot more accurate to say internal forces curbed the success of such measures - we are terrible subjects for such things.
I disagree - I think we are terrible subjects due to our "vulnerability" to outside influence. This is almost a sociopolitical topic that may have less to do with what we're talking about, though, as much as I think it might be interesting for a thread or PM discussion on its own.


MWHistorian wrote:21,000 SOB? We couldn't hold Iraq with so few numbers, let along a whole planet...or hundreds of planets.
That's what I keep saying all the time. The SoB are not expected to hold a whole planet. Neither are the Space Marines. I feel like people in this thread are still treating them like line troops when the Ecclesiarchy uses them more like its own version of Space Marines. This comparison/proximity to the Astartes seems quite intended by GW and has in the past been directly referenced in studio material. As much as this is an obvious oversimplification - they are indeed "female Space Marines", close in combat prowess as well as rarity.

(interesting story thread, btw - may have to give that a read when I'm no longer in the office)


SisterSydney wrote:Yes, it's really silly there's not an AdMech army codex at all -- Sisters at least get something.
I used to justify it with the Adeptus Mechanicus doing little in terms of military operations as they leave this to the IG - but I think I've come around to a position where I'd say it would be cool to have a sort of "Explorator army list" for those forces attached to a Mechanicus Explorator team. Lots of servitors and TechGuard. It'd be a little like the old Inquisition armies of 3E, just that the Inquisitor would be a Tech-Priest... ahh, ideas.

SisterSydney wrote:And given the sheer sprawling size of the Imperium, and how fragmented it is, and how isolated some regions can get due to warp storms and worse, you can reasonably justify any deviation from the norm, from Sisters who get as drunk as Space Wolves or who practice ritualized prostitution as an initiation rite (it's a Book of Genesis thing) to Sisters who just assume they're all unbearably sinful by the mere fact of being human and form Minor Orders entirely composed of Repentia (didn't someone write a fandex for just this?).
This kind of variation would be explicitly contradicted by the Liber Sororitas, though.

"As the Orders are primarily based together at one of these two sites the Sisterhood as a whole is a far more homogenous organisation than many other institutions of the Imperium, such as the Adeptus Astartes or the Imperial Guard. Though Sisters spend many long hours in solitude or training, they are nonetheless part of a wider organisation than their own Order, and for this reason see themselves as members of the Adepta Sororitas as much as their own Order. Furthermore, it is not uncommon for a Sister to transfer from one Order to another, particularly in the case of a Sister who has become wounded or too old to fight transferring from an Order Militant to one of the non-militant Orders, such as the Orders Famulous or Hospitaller. It has also been known for a senior member of the Adepta Sororitas to leave the organisation entirely for higher office elsewhere, such as within the upper echelons of the Adeptus Terra, or the Inquisition – such an event is unheard of within the Adeptus Astartes, and far from common within the Imperial Guard.
It has been observed that the different Adepta Sororitas Orders do not display any great divergence from one another in terms of combat doctrine or organisation, as do many Space Marine Chapters and Imperial Guard regiments. Such differences arise, in the case of the Astartes, from the strong genetic link with the Chapter's Primarch or in the case of the Imperial Guard, as a result of combat doctrines unique to the culture from which the regiment was raised. The Adepta Sororitas can trace the routes of its doctrines to a single source - the San Leor temple of the Daughters of the Emperor - and their teachings have remained largely unchanged since that time.
Despite the lack of significant divergences between the Orders Militant in terms of organisation and combat doctrine, there is a degree of variance to be found within the teachings of the founders of the Orders, which tends to reflect the outlook of each Founding Saint. For example, the Sisters of the Order of Our Martyred Lady can be said to reflect the vengeful nature of their patron, Saint Katherine, while the Sisters of the Order the Bloody Rose share the brooding, quick to anger nature of Saint Mina."


Speaking of, this "primarily based" is a good sign that the Major Orders still command more importance than the Minor ones, which wouldn't be the case if they were less significant due to size.
It's also worth pointing out that every single Novice Sister takes her vows on Terra itself, in a ceremony in presence of the Ecclesiarch, with only 499 other novices present. I just don't see this working out if there'd be millions of them that'd have to be shipped around like that.


tl;dr - the Sisters of the different Orders idolise different Founding Saints and thus tend to differ in their imitation, but I really don't think it would allow for such crass deviation from what we actually read in GW's material and how this faction is introduced to us.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2013/09/23 15:30:23


 
   
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 Lynata wrote:
ClockworkZion wrote:Marines are claimed to be worth far more than everyone else though. Sisters don't get fluff about being able to clear buildings armed with nothing more than a combat knife after all.
Yet GW still said they are "equal to their brother Space Marines".
Just because it's not touted in every third sentence as is the case with the Astartes (and even there I've never seen anything about "clearing buildings with only a combat knife" in studio fluff) does not necessarily mean the Sisters as an organisation are less capable. Maybe they just need 2 Sisters to equal 1 Marine, instead of 10 Guardsmen for 1 Marine. But since the Major Orders are several times the size of an Astartes Chapter, I still see no problem here. Equal weapons and armour protection would do a lot to equalise fighting prowess, and genetical enhancements have their limitations when confronted by a cal .75 armour-piercing timed explosive charge.


5th Ed Vanguard Vets fluff talks about their prowess and ability to kill large numbers of enemies even when minimally equipped.

 Lynata wrote:

ClockworkZion wrote:And while Sisters DO deploy with other armies, they don't do so more than anyone else does.
When they actually go to war? Sure they do.
Whenever they don't it's usually out of necessity (reinforcements not available or not trusted) or because the operation was deemed perfectly within their own capabilities as an independent force. The Space Marines are no different, and if need be I can deliver a number of examples of Space Marines doing lesser stuff on their own as well, such as the Iron Hands eradicating a bunch of feral tribes on Medusa IV (what a challenge for the Astartes!).


I did say they work with other organizations, but the way they handle combat with them is more traditionally than the Marine's "strike the head" methods.

 Lynata wrote:

ClockworkZion wrote:They've since dropped out of all codex materials and haven't even gotten a passing reference in the last two rulebooks (they were last in the 4th ed one I don't have a copy of that kicking around so that might be shaky), so who knows how valid that is anymore?
If we'd only go with the fluff of the current edition, then the background of the Sisters of Battle consists of nothing but two pages in the Rulebook.
Fortunately, GW has always built on and added on previous fluff, so until they publish something that at least hints at the Ecclesiarchy suddenly not turning Imperial citizens into fanatical mobs anymore, I don't see why it should be discarded. Hell, the designer's notes for the 3E Codex even flat-out stated that 1E Rogue Trader fluff for the Sisters is still valid.


i'm not saying that the Frateris Militia can't be around anymore, but it Seems that the focus is less on them and more in the Sisters who seem to have picked up some of those duties.

And those two pages of fluff managed to do a nice job of dropping the Inquisitorial ties, something we take as pretty canon.

 Lynata wrote:

ClockworkZion wrote:Even if you consider that, a bunch of zealous, but untrained, old men aren't exactly going to win any protracted conflicts.
Sebastian Thor would like to have a word with you regarding the Age of Apostasy. The Space Marines and the Adeptus Mechanicus would have never opposed Vandire were it not for that "bunch of zealous but untrained old men" and the path they carved to Terra.

Zealots can come from any vocation and background, and though I'm quite sure that some of them will be "untrained old men" you'll also have men (and women) in their prime, and some of them may have even had previous experience with various weapons (be it due to their profession or the world's cultural background). In fact, the Frateris Militia can be so dangerous that the Ecclesiarchy tends to refrain from raising larger mobs outside times of dire need not because they fear the Inquisition, but because of the collateral damage these fanatics can cause. When local enforcers and PDF are unable to reliably contain these rioters, I think it's safe to say that they can be dangerous enough to serve as cannonfodder against alien incursion as well.

"A single man with faith can triumph over a legion of the faithless. Untold billions of the faithful can never be opposed."
- Sermons of Thor, volume XI Chapter IV

"One man can start a landslide with the casting of a single pebble."
- Ecclesiarch Deacis IX


The Reign of Blood involved Vandire also taking over the Administranium which gave him control over far more than just preachers and priests.

 Lynata wrote:

ClockworkZion wrote:As of the 6th Edition rulebook the Sisters are listed as "waging Wars of Faith, aiding the Inquisition, or protecting Ecclesiarchy buildings, property, and relics." which in my mind means they're at least in every system there is an important site to the Ecclesiarchy, if not in some number on every world.
Well, we'll have to agree to disagree here. We'd see a lot more SoB in the fluff if a general task to protect Ecclesiarchy property and personnel would mean that means they actually do protect property and personnel on-site at any time. That's kind of like saying that every single town and village to the smallest five-families-hamlet has its own police or fire department just because the respective organisation's general mandate encompasses every single citizen. But that's not how it works. They respond when needed and move out to help, but that doesn't mean they have to be around anywhere and everywhere.
You're also missing the rulebook's explicit statement that sometimes it's just a single Sister standing lone vigil over a shrine.


That statement hardly contradicts my point though. How many worlds are ther in the Imperium again? 50 million plus? To put. Minimum of one Sister on every world we'd need far more than we have now. And that's not even going into the fact we know they deploy in higher numbers as well.

 Lynata wrote:

ClockworkZion wrote:CJ? I'm not sure what that is.
And when you add in the resources of the Inquisition just about anyone can be properly equipped to handle a surgical strike. But the Militant Orders aren't exactly equipped for that from what I see (no teleport homers, or beacons, no strike cruisers, no orbital bombardments, no vehicles specifically designed to break enemy lines/fortifications....ect).
Ah, CJ is "Citadel Journal" - it used to be a magazine from GW much like White Dwarf, but with more focus on rules and tinkering rather than news. Sadly, it's no longer in print (much like the BFG magazine)... :(


Ah, I don't own any of those so was not aware of any details in them.

 Lynata wrote:
And for their capabilities, Codex Imperialis mentioned the primary Convents have their own fleets, and the CJ article mentioned the Orders even keeping drop pods in storage - though they tend to break them out only when being tasked to purge a rogue Marine Chapter, which they do by "disabling it from the top down". Their Seraphim jump infantry would also come in handy when it comes to deep-striking such fortifications, or blowing holes into it via usage of melta-bombs. And then we have the Exorcist missile tank that could be deployed in a siege.
Granted, many of these abilities are (imho) limited to the Major Orders, but I would expect the Minor Orders to call in help from their maternal Ordo Maioris if, for some reason, they see themselves unable to cope with such a task. Fortunately, few cathedrals are built like a fortress, tho.

Spoiler:


See, I'd never seen that article, and while I am familiar with seeing those drop pods around now and then I still don't think Sisters are completely set up to fight like Marines do. They can do aspects of it, but the way things are done is different between the two and without alot of new toys, the Sisters aren't set up to approach every conflict that way.

 Lynata wrote:

I think very few 40k fans are familiar with the various toys or capabilities the Sisterhood has been associated with over the years. This is a result of GW simply not writing a lot about them, though. Most of the fluff that gets repeated over the years is the same general description we see again and again, with more specialised stuff being limited to WD and website articles or the (proper) Codex books - but who here has actually read those?


I don't have access to the Citadel Journals, or the old supplement rulebooks but I have read a lot of their fluff (I've got the Liber Sororitasand even a copy of the WD where they detail sculpting GS flames for the heavy flamers) and I have the codexes. There is a limit to what we can dig up though as a lot of stuff has vanished in the last 20+ years.

 Lynata wrote:

ClockworkZion wrote:Lastly, I said a number of upwards to 100,000,000 Adeptus Sororitas not Sisters of Battle. That means 100 million members in both the Militant AND non-Militant Orders.
The Liber Sororitas in WD #293 mentioned that no Non-Militant section of the Sisterhood is larger than the Militant - the largest ones such as the Orders Famulous are barely equal in number. There's a lot of smaller non-militant Orders, some of whom are just a dozen Sisters pursuing some strange task, but I don't think that those are the subject of the discussion here, apart form the sheer impossibility to quantify them.


Even going off of that, you can easily split the number I gave in half you can easily say that the individual non-militant sections are smaller than the militant one without contradicting anything.

 Lynata wrote:

ClockworkZion wrote:and it's a more reasonable number than "numbering tens of thousands" per major militant order and who knows how many per every other order (again, 6th Edition)
"Thousands", not tens of thousands. And I'm still saying that applying to the size of the setting is a mistake. For the Sisters of Battle - as well as for the Space Marines.
It's the very same thing. Neither army is meant to wage wars on their own, and neither army is expected to be anywhere at every time.


i'll have to look at the rule book again, but I think it says the 6 major militant orders have tens of thousands. Still not enough for the size of the Imperium in my opinion though.

 Lynata wrote:

ClockworkZion wrote:PDFs are often barely trained at best (some worlds ARE better about it than others, but let's be honest here, a regular Guardsmen is a better fighter than they are)
The Imperial Guard is recruited out of the PDF. They don't magically turn into better fighters just because they are suddenly fighting off-world, and there are a lot of PDFs who are more elite than a lot of IG regiments - given that the latter are sometimes recruited directly from untrained farmhands or prison gangs, with the only military training they ever had being what the Commissar managed to drill into their heads in the time their transport took to arrive at the warzone they were shipped to.


Conscripts are a good example of what the PDF wold be like on the table.

And the Guard get training once they join. They train, and fight. If they live they might get leave too. They are no longer butchers or bakers or anything else, just Soldiers. And it's that distinction that makes them better than the PDF: they can focus on just being a soldier.

 Lynata wrote:

ClockworkZion wrote:Furthermore the Sisters of Battle don't have any fluff suggesting that there are any limits on their numbers of any kind (just no men).
They have to be female orphans, whose parents were Imperial officials and who have been raised in the Schola Progenium from infancy, where they had to excel in both physical and mental disciplines far beyond the average, and whose bodies must be pure and free of mutation of any kind. That's a fairly long set of basic requirements right there.

And, as I've mentioned earlier, the Convents Prioris and Sanctorum can only house 15.000 Sisters tops, each. With any Minor Order offshoot being a spontaneous decision regarding a detachment of the Major Orders to remain on-site even when their original mission was already accomplished, or when it was realised that their mission would take much, much longer. The fact that the Minor Orders only started to pop up in mid M38 is a fairly important sign regarding how often that seems to happen.


It is a long list of requirements but in a selection pool as large as the Imperium are you honestly trying to say it'd be hard to find people wo fit the qualifications?

And seeing as the fluff of the Sisters puts them as barely being in their home sites due to hard far and wide their spread I fail to see an issue with the housing.

 Lynata wrote:

ClockworkZion wrote:They don't even have to ask the High Lords to found new Orders like the Marines do
You don't know that. When the Sisters were first founded, the Inquisition called the Conclave of Nephilim to address the issue of the Ecclesiarchy suddenly having an army in spite of the Decree Passive, and it was resolved only because of that backroom deal with the Ordo Hereticus. Arguably, there's quite a lot of influential people who are sceptical regarding the relationship between the Orders Militant and the Church.


You mean the same Conclave that vanished from the codex materials in 5th, and originally only existed as a way to justify C:WH in the first place?

Aside from that, with the Sisters being pretty good at executing people who need it, even in the Ecclesiarchy, I don't imagine people would be too upset with them seeing at they do a good job keeping the Ecclesiarchy in check, somethingthe rest of the Imperium apparently failed to do in the past.

That said, you glossed over my points about the scale of the Imperium and how illogical it is for us to have numbers THAT small.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2013/09/23 16:09:38


 
   
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That statement hardly contradicts my point though. How many worlds are ther in the Imperium again? 50 million plus? To put. Minimum of one Sister on every world we'd need far more than we have now. And that's not even going into the fact we know they deploy in higher numbers as well.


One million worlds in the Imperium, give or take. One million Space Marines. One for every world in the Imperium.


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ClockworkZion wrote:5th Ed Vanguard Vets fluff talks about their prowess and ability to kill large numbers of enemies even when minimally equipped.
I'd wager that's referring to boltguns rather than knives, though. But I am also still going by GW's fluff about the chance of las weapons to injure Marines.

ClockworkZion wrote:i'm not saying that the Frateris Militia can't be around anymore, but it Seems that the focus is less on them and more in the Sisters who seem to have picked up some of those duties.
And those two pages of fluff managed to do a nice job of dropping the Inquisitorial ties, something we take as pretty canon.
The Inquisitorial ties are a good example, actually. The two pages of fluff in the SoB section of the rulebook don't mention anything about the Ordo Hereticus, yet the Inquisition textbox in the Imperium organisation section still refers to it.

And I now have a feeling I might be able to find something about the Frateris Militia in the pages about the Ecclesiarchy, too, which has its own section in the BRB. Will confirm after I get home.

ClockworkZion wrote:The Reign of Blood involved Vandire also taking over the Administranium which gave him control over far more than just preachers and priests.
That's a point in my favour, actually. I wasn't referring to Vandire's armies of Frateris Templars and Imperial Guard, but to Sebastian Thor's "Confederacy of Light" - that crusade of the common people that started on Dimmamar and then carved a path right unto Terra, in spite of Vandire's control.

Sure, you could argue how it picked up elements of PDF on the way from governors swayed by Thor and his followers, but this is no different from an Ecclesiarchal War of Faith being unofficially joined by Imperial Guard and Navy units because of the influence the Confessors have over the faithful.

ClockworkZion wrote:How many worlds are ther in the Imperium again? 50 million plus?
A million.
Including AdMech Forge Worlds, Astartes fiefs, prison and mining colonies, ...

Although that is admittedly besides the point, as I'd even argue against the idea of there being one Sister per world.

ClockworkZion wrote:There is a limit to what we can dig up though as a lot of stuff has vanished in the last 20+ years.
Unfortunately. I'm still trying to hunt down anything I can get my greedy fingers on and managed to acquire some really old issues of White Dwarf, but I still feel like I'm missing stuff ...

Still, props for having the Liber Sororitas and the old Codices! That's more than most.

ClockworkZion wrote:i'll have to look at the rule book again, but I think it says the 6 major militant orders have tens of thousands.
"The Adepta Sororitas are divided into several major Orders Militant, the fighting strength of each numbering several thousand warriors. There are also many lesser Sisterhoods comprised of around a hundred Battle Sisters."
- 6E Rulebook p.195

You sure you don't have the "tens of thousands" from a Lexicanum article? Because just a week ago someone else fell into the same trap (that's how I can whip up the quote so fast ).

ClockworkZion wrote:And the Guard get training once they join. They train, and fight. If they live they might get leave too. They are no longer butchers or bakers or anything else, just Soldiers. And it's that distinction that makes them better than the PDF: they can focus on just being a soldier.
This is almost a topic for itself, but:
Guard get training once they join, yes. Maybe they've had some before, but it's not guaranteed. The training they get once they join depends entirely on the time it takes their transport to arrive at the battlefield.
In contrast, the PDF on many worlds may be a professional military as well, with soldiers who have years of experience fighting in local feuds between the planetary nobility, or defending their home against raids from pirates and alien forces.

There's too much overlap between the two forces to say that either one will always be better than the other, and I think the PDF has an unjust reputation for being losers. The 5E Guard Codex even specifically addresses this perception and declares it false. It's just like people think the lasgun sucks, just because it is the "weakest" weapon in the TT - nevermind that it is still quite powerful!
Some IG regiments consist of nothing but inexperienced recruits conscripted from rural farms or out of a prison complex. Some PDF are a standing force of superbly equipped and drilled troops with years of combat experience. And if the Imperial Guard is lucky, they sometimes get to recruit from these so they get to raise the better IG regiments. The Mordian Iron Guard wouldn't be so famed without the training these soldiers receive on their own homeworld - and let's not even talk about Cadia's Youth Armies.

ClockworkZion wrote:It is a long list of requirements but in a selection pool as large as the Imperium are you honestly trying to say it'd be hard to find people wo fit the qualifications?
Frankly, yes. The "from infancy" bit alone likely cuts out 99% of all candidates that would even have a chance at fulfilling the other requirements. It requires the Ecclesiarchy to "take possession" of the orphan as a newborn, which would mean that it'd likely require voluntary surrender on part of the parents (who also need to be Imperial officials, rather than anyone) instead of just taking a kid that has already been raised normally for a few years when the parents die. The latter can still join the Schola as a progena, but they won't be eligible for Sororitas recruitment.

It's also worth to reiterate that the vast majority of progena end up as civilian scribes in the Administratum. Only a small part are deemed good enough to earn a transfer into the military to become Navy NCOs, Segmentum Command staff members or even Adeptus Arbites and Commissars. Even fewer are the ones who would become Storm Troopers or members of one of the Orders of the Adepta Sororitas, and even then it need not be a Battle Sister.

I'd still say that the political considerations are the primary reason, though, else they'd just drop the requirements a bit to extend their numbers (as was possibly the case during the first years of the Sisterhood, given the discrepancy in the jump from 4k to 10k in the first couple years, compared to how it took them 2.500 years to go from 10k to 30k). But at least these political considerations "allow" the Sororitas to take only the best of the best, in turn increasing the efficiency of the organisation.

ClockworkZion wrote:And seeing as the fluff of the Sisters puts them as barely being in their home sites due to hard far and wide their spread I fail to see an issue with the housing.
That depends on the timing. Right now, with Armageddon 3 and the Black Crusade in full swing, the Major Orders have their hands full, but obviously this wasn't always the case. It is also noteworthy that the Major Orders have been said to sometimes cap out at 7.000 warriors - which obviously would only work if most of them are not at home, or the other Orders have suffered sufficient casualties to "make room".
Still, until the Convent buildings are extended again like it was done once before, I don't see how you could squeeze another Major Order in there.

ClockworkZion wrote:You mean the same Conclave that vanished from the codex materials in 5th, and originally only existed as a way to justify C:WH in the first place?
Yep. Until it gets actually "retconned", this connection is still there.

ClockworkZion wrote:That said, you glossed over my points about the scale of the Imperium and how illogical it is for us to have numbers THAT small.
I don't see how I could address that - I could just as well say you glossed over my point as to why they'd have to be that large just because the Imperium is that large.
I guess we just disagree regarding whether or not they need to be everywhere where there's an Ecclesiarchy presence, which I just don't see in the fluff. Of course IF they'd truly have to be anywhere where the Ecclesiarchy is, THEN size begins to matter. Before that point, not at all.

Also, sorry for the "quote war". At least it's an interesting topic!

This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2013/09/23 19:11:39


 
   
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 Lynata wrote:
ClockworkZion wrote:5th Ed Vanguard Vets fluff talks about their prowess and ability to kill large numbers of enemies even when minimally equipped.
I'd wager that's referring to boltguns rather than knives, though. But I am also still going by GW's fluff about the chance of las weapons to injure Marines.


I'm pretty sure it's a combat knife. I'll look at my copy of the codex when I get home.

 Lynata wrote:
ClockworkZion wrote:i'm not saying that the Frateris Militia can't be around anymore, but it Seems that the focus is less on them and more in the Sisters who seem to have picked up some of those duties.
And those two pages of fluff managed to do a nice job of dropping the Inquisitorial ties, something we take as pretty canon.
The Inquisitorial ties are a good example, actually. The two pages of fluff in the SoB section of the rulebook don't mention anything about the Ordo Hereticus, yet the Inquisition textbox in the Imperium organisation section still refers to it.

And I now have a feeling I might be able to find something about the Frateris Militia in the pages about the Ecclesiarchy, too, which has its own section in the BRB. Will confirm after I get home.


Well if you find something let me know so I can read it, because it may have fallen out of my brain!

 Lynata wrote:
ClockworkZion wrote:The Reign of Blood involved Vandire also taking over the Administranium which gave him control over far more than just preachers and priests.
That's a point in my favour, actually. I wasn't referring to Vandire's armies of Frateris Templars and Imperial Guard, but to Sebastian Thor's "Confederacy of Light" - that crusade of the common people that started on Dimmamar and then carved a path right unto Terra, in spite of Vandire's control.

Sure, you could argue how it picked up elements of PDF on the way from governors swayed by Thor and his followers, but this is no different from an Ecclesiarchal War of Faith being unofficially joined by Imperial Guard and Navy units because of the influence the Confessors have over the faithful.


It's less a point in your favor when we consider that he had to get his buddies in the Assassins to do his dirty work. He had power and friends and not everything was done by those old men.

And that Crusade of Light was probably the largest riot you'll ever see outside of a Waaaaagh. It was far more massive and encompassing than the Frateris Militia ever is.

 Lynata wrote:
ClockworkZion wrote:How many worlds are ther in the Imperium again? 50 million plus?
A million.
Including AdMech Forge Worlds, Astartes fiefs, prison and mining colonies, ...

Although that is admittedly besides the point, as I'd even argue against the idea of there being one Sister per world.


At least one Sister per holy site......just saying that the numbers are too low at a 100K or less.

 Lynata wrote:
ClockworkZion wrote:There is a limit to what we can dig up though as a lot of stuff has vanished in the last 20+ years.
Unfortunately. I'm still trying to hunt down anything I can get my greedy fingers on and managed to acquire some really old issues of White Dwarf, but I still feel like I'm missing stuff ...

Still, props for having the Liber Sororitas and the old Codices! That's more than most.


I don't have the original Liber Sororitas sadly though, just a WD I managed to track down online. I haven't been able to find either Astronomicon compilations yet.

 Lynata wrote:
ClockworkZion wrote:i'll have to look at the rule book again, but I think it says the 6 major militant orders have tens of thousands.
"The Adepta Sororitas are divided into several major Orders Militant, the fighting strength of each numbering several thousand warriors. There are also many lesser Sisterhoods comprised of around a hundred Battle Sisters."
- 6E Rulebook p.195

You sure you don't have the "tens of thousands" from a Lexicanum article? Because just a week ago someone else fell into the same trap (that's how I can whip up the quote so fast ).


I might be, it was late, and I was tired. Regardless I see the number as too small. This is the same Imperium that can throw a thousand guard effortlessly at a single hill or bunker but can't get more than 100k nuns? I call BS. Or at least a bad sense of scale by the authors.

 Lynata wrote:
ClockworkZion wrote:And the Guard get training once they join. They train, and fight. If they live they might get leave too. They are no longer butchers or bakers or anything else, just Soldiers. And it's that distinction that makes them better than the PDF: they can focus on just being a soldier.
This is almost a topic for itself, but:
Guard get training once they join, yes. Maybe they've had some before, but it's not guaranteed. The training they get once they join depends entirely on the time it takes their transport to arrive at the battlefield.
In contrast, the PDF on many worlds may be a professional military as well, with soldiers who have years of experience fighting in local feuds between the planetary nobility, or defending their home against raids from pirates and alien forces.

There's too much overlap between the two forces to say that either one will always be better than the other, and I think the PDF has an unjust reputation for being losers. The 5E Guard Codex even specifically addresses this perception and declares it false. It's just like people think the lasgun sucks, just because it is the "weakest" weapon in the TT - nevermind that it is still quite powerful!
Some IG regiments consist of nothing but inexperienced recruits conscripted from rural farms or out of a prison complex. Some PDF are a standing force of superbly equipped and drilled troops with years of combat experience. And if the Imperial Guard is lucky, they sometimes get to recruit from these so they get to raise the better IG regiments. The Mordian Iron Guard wouldn't be so famed without the training these soldiers receive on their own homeworld - and let's not even talk about Cadia's Youth Armies.


Fair enough. The PDF still is a worse military force than the guard because they're only "soldiers" while training (occasionally) or when something happens. That's a lot less time spent honing the skills and mindset of a successful soldier.

 Lynata wrote:
ClockworkZion wrote:It is a long list of requirements but in a selection pool as large as the Imperium are you honestly trying to say it'd be hard to find people wo fit the qualifications?
Frankly, yes. The "from infancy" bit alone likely cuts out 99% of all candidates that would even have a chance at fulfilling the other requirements. It requires the Ecclesiarchy to "take possession" of the orphan as a newborn, which would mean that it'd likely require voluntary surrender on part of the parents (who also need to be Imperial officials, rather than anyone) instead of just taking a kid that has already been raised normally for a few years when the parents die. The latter can still join the Schola as a progena, but they won't be eligible for Sororitas recruitment.

It's also worth to reiterate that the vast majority of progena end up as civilian scribes in the Administratum. Only a small part are deemed good enough to earn a transfer into the military to become Navy NCOs, Segmentum Command staff members or even Adeptus Arbites and Commissars. Even fewer are the ones who would become Storm Troopers or members of one of the Orders of the Adepta Sororitas, and even then it need not be a Battle Sister.

I'd still say that the political considerations are the primary reason, though, else they'd just drop the requirements a bit to extend their numbers (as was possibly the case during the first years of the Sisterhood, given the discrepancy in the jump from 4k to 10k in the first couple years, compared to how it took them 2.500 years to go from 10k to 30k). But at least these political considerations "allow" the Sororitas to take only the best of the best, in turn increasing the efficiency of the organisation.


Taking my 6 quadrillion number earlier and taking 99% away still leaves us with 60,000,000,000,000 individuals. That's 60 TRILLION for anyone who doesn't recognize a number that long.

So yeah, STILL not enough. I can run the same math later for you with a single Quadrillion if you like. The thing is that a 100k is just too low for the setting.

 Lynata wrote:
ClockworkZion wrote:And seeing as the fluff of the Sisters puts them as barely being in their home sites due to hard far and wide their spread I fail to see an issue with the housing.
That depends on the timing. Right now, with Armageddon 3 and the Black Crusade in full swing, the Major Orders have their hands full, but obviously this wasn't always the case. It is also noteworthy that the Major Orders have been said to sometimes cap out at 7.000 warriors - which obviously would only work if most of them are not at home, or the other Orders have suffered sufficient casualties to "make room".
Still, until the Convent buildings are extended again like it was done once before, I don't see how you could squeeze another Major Order in there.


We also need to account for the fact that these orders have "headquarters" of sorts all over the galaxy so it's easy to say the Convent as having a cap while they subdivide the order out so never more than a certain amount are ever "home".

 Lynata wrote:
ClockworkZion wrote:You mean the same Conclave that vanished from the codex materials in 5th, and originally only existed as a way to justify C:WH in the first place?
Yep. Until it gets actually "retconned", this connection is still there.


Fair enough. It just got left out of our actual codex is all.

 Lynata wrote:
ClockworkZion wrote:That said, you glossed over my points about the scale of the Imperium and how illogical it is for us to have numbers THAT small.
I don't see how I could address that - I could just as well say you glossed over my point as to why they'd have to be that large just because the Imperium is that large.
I guess we just disagree regarding whether or not they need to be everywhere where there's an Ecclesiarchy presence, which I just don't see in the fluff. Of course IF they'd truly have to be anywhere where the Ecclesiarchy is, THEN size begins to matter. Before that point, not at all.

Also, sorry for the "quote war". At least it's an interesting topic!


The way I read the fluff it suggests that they are the Ecclesiarchy's constant shadow, going everywhere the church does, hence why I find their numbers too small to really fit the vastness of the setting.

And as you can tell I "quote war" a lot myself.
   
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 Lynata wrote:
And for their capabilities, Codex Imperialis mentioned the primary Convents have their own fleets, and the CJ article mentioned the Orders even keeping drop pods in storage


You may have fluffed me to death on the number of Minor Orders, but I'm blown away by the rules for the Drop Pod -- where are they from?

Also, there's a whole thread about Sisters' space assets here for those who want to pursue it further.

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 Psienesis wrote:
Well, if you check out Sister Sydney's homebrew/expansion rules, you'll find all kinds of units the Sisters could have, that fit with the theme of the Sisters (as a tabletop army) perfectly well, and are damn-near-perfectly balanced.

I’m updating that fandex now & I’m eager for feedback on new home-brew units for the Sisters: Sororitas Bikers, infiltrators & Novices, tanks, flyers, characters, superheavies, Frateris Militia, and now Confessors and Battle Conclave characters
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Thing is... there's simply not a minimum of one Sister per holy site. There *are* holy sites with just one Sister at them, and others with much more, but there are many that don't have any at all.

Also, remember, that not every world in the Imperium is going to have a "holy site". A Mechanicus Forge World certainly isn't. Some Paradise World owned by the Inquisition or the Administratum isn't. An Administratum World given over to housing continents full of old paperwork certainly isn't. The Homeworlds of any Space Marine Chapter almost certainly isn't (and that's a thousand or more worlds right there). Some airless rock that is being mined for raw materials by a private mining company isn't.

There's a whole lot of ways to whittle down that number of "one million worlds" to something in the thousands, or even fewer, and we have seen in sources that the Sisters simply aren't on every Shrine World or holy site.

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ClockworkZion wrote:Well if you find something let me know so I can read it, because it may have fallen out of my brain!
Alright, had a quick glance through the pages, and indeed there is nothing I would deem "explicit" regarding the Frateris Militia. However, page 159 of the Ecclesiarchy description says the Sisters of Battle are the spearhead of a War of Faith - which to me means that there is still more to it than them.

Anecdotal evidence once more. But then again, I'm against discarding any Pre-6E fluff that is not contradicted by other GW material, anyways.

ClockworkZion wrote:It's less a point in your favor when we consider that he had to get his buddies in the Assassins to do his dirty work. He had power and friends and not everything was done by those old men.
I think there's a misunderstanding here. I am not talking about Vandire's assassins or armies at all, but Thor's militias.

ClockworkZion wrote:And that Crusade of Light was probably the largest riot you'll ever see outside of a Waaaaagh. It was far more massive and encompassing than the Frateris Militia ever is.
The Frateris Militia is not a single organisation, but merely a catchall term for the frenzied mobs raised by the clergy - as such, they can be as small as a dozen zealots, or as big as millions of agitated faithful. And even Sebastian Thor had to start somewhere - he didn't snap a finger and summoned billions of people from several worlds to do his bidding; his following grew over time, with every planet he visited.

ClockworkZion wrote:At least one Sister per holy site......just saying that the numbers are too low at a 100K or less.
I just can't agree with that assessment - call it stubbornness and a personal preference for the numbers provided. Extended protection, yes. Responsibility. But continuous physical presence? That's just not what I "grew up" with, as far as SoB fluff is concerned.

"Every major world in the Imperium belongs to one of the Cardinal Dioceses, and will therefore host at least one Ecclesiarchal cathedral and a multitude of servants, dignitaries and clerics. Such a concentration of the Ecclesiarchy's power must be defended, and so a significant force of battle sisters will be present at many such sites."[/i]
- 3E C:WH

---> Every major world, with the Battle Sisters being present on many of them. This leaves a lot of room for speculation.

ClockworkZion wrote:This is the same Imperium that can throw a thousand guard effortlessly at a single hill or bunker but can't get more than 100k nuns? I call BS. Or at least a bad sense of scale by the authors.
This is also the same Imperium that "can't get more than a million Space Marines".

As I said, it may not be ability, but rather unwillingness of the powers-that-be.

ClockworkZion wrote:Taking my 6 quadrillion number earlier and taking 99% away still leaves us with 60,000,000,000,000 individuals. That's 60 TRILLION for anyone who doesn't recognize a number that long.
Even then you'd still need these 6 quadrillion people to be orphans born from Imperial officials (officers and adepts) who have perfectly pure genetics and manage to not only graduate from the Schola, but graduate with top marks. Oh, and they must all be girls.
Are you sure those numbers sound realistic? It's a pretty exclusive combination of prerequisites...

"The Battle Sisters of the Orders Militant have many strengths. They are recruited from the fastest, strongest and most adept individuals to be raised in the Schola Progenium. Their training is total, honed across the millennia to ensure that every Battle Sister is more than a match for almost any foe. Their weapons and armour are amongst the best the Adeptus Mechanicus can produce. These factors alone would make the Battle Sisters a mighty weapon in the Emperor's arsenal, but that is not all.
The Battle Sisters are utterly dedicated to the Emperor. Their one purpose is to strive for His honour and glory and to protect the Imperium from all threats. The faith of the Adepta Sororitas is unswerving, they are raised from birth to believe the Emperor is the only hope for humanity. Their pious, rigid way of life allows the Battle Sisters no room for pleasure; there is only prayer and war. There is nothing an enemy could offer them, they are impossible to bribe and totally incorruptible.
The Battle Sisters are one of the few bastions standing between humanity and extinction. The Sororitas must defeat alien dominance, rogue psykers, daemonic influence, heretics, blasphemers and apostates, or everything the Emperor has striven to build and protect will be lost."

- WD #211

(Troike: was this the quote you were looking for? *keeps trying!* )

SisterSydney wrote:You may have fluffed me to death on the number of Minor Orders, but I'm blown away by the rules for the Drop Pod -- where are they from?
Citadel Journal #49 - it had rules for an Ordo Hereticus Strike Force, an army list written by Andy Hoare about an Inquisitor leading a force of Battle Sisters against an excommunicated Space Marine Chapter (similar to the fluff in the "Renegade Space Marines" Index Astartes article in WD #303), focused entirely on deep-striking the enemy HQ. It also features some cool details about an "Inner Circle of the Daughters of the Emperor" - a secretive group of senior members from each of the six Major Orders Militant. To be fair, the background also makes it clear that they only get out this gear when things get really tough; it's certainly not a standard op.

The army list also does not have the Chapter Approved stamp, so I think it wasn't Tournament-legal. Citadel Journal often featured experimental rules; where White Dwarf is the general hobby gamer magazine, CJ was pretty much the expert's journal. For example, CJ #49 also had experimental rules to field Saint Praxedes with the Witch Hunter Codex, and it even had a sort of "Proto-Repentia" akin to Sister Anastasia (that is, seeking penance and absolution alone, rather than in a squad led by a mistress). Totally badass: the Repentia had a rule where she could join any squad, and when the squad was assaulted by an enemy she'd allow her allies to pull back and remain behind alone, binding the entire enemy squad in melee. If she actually managed to survive that, she'd get the "Absolution" trait, whereupon she'd generate a single Faith Point, and any squad she rejoins after this event instantly becomes Faithful because they'd all be like: "OH GAK did you see that?! Miracle! Miracle!"
Bonus: This type of Repentia could be added not only to a Sisters list, but to any Imperial Guard and Space Marine army, because in their quest for absolution they'd wander and attach themselves to the first Imperial crusade they come across.

The article even featured a rather cool piece of fluff - a report from a Guardsman's confession for his court martial due to cowardice, where he'd tell the interviewing Commissar how a Repentia saved his life on the battlefield.
   
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 Psienesis wrote:
Thing is... there's simply not a minimum of one Sister per holy site. There *are* holy sites with just one Sister at them, and others with much more, but there are many that don't have any at all.


Oh I know, but I was making a point that even at 1 per it still takes a lot of Sisters.

 Psienesis wrote:
Also, remember, that not every world in the Imperium is going to have a "holy site". A Mechanicus Forge World certainly isn't. Some Paradise World owned by the Inquisition or the Administratum isn't. An Administratum World given over to housing continents full of old paperwork certainly isn't. The Homeworlds of any Space Marine Chapter almost certainly isn't (and that's a thousand or more worlds right there). Some airless rock that is being mined for raw materials by a private mining company isn't.


Actually I'd say the more "civilized" the planet the more likely the Ecclesiarchy will be there. Afterall the Imperial Cult is the official religion of the Imperium and to refuse to allow it on your planet is likely to be met with suspicion and distrust (unless you're Space Marines because apparently they're above such things despite proving that they can fall to Chaos all the damned time). I imagine that supporting the Ecclesiarchy tends to be political shorthand for "I'm trustworthy, honest!" Besides, anywhere there are teeming masses there is a place for the Ecclesiarchy. There is fluff that says that some of the Ad Mech see the Emperor as the same being as the Omnissiah (others see them as separate entities) which is a valid interpretation of the Imperial Creed last time I checked. And those serfs need somewhere to pray and worship when not working.

And let's not forget (since we keep bringing books into this) that we've got at least one book with the Ecclesiarchy on an Administratum world. If I'm recalling correctly one of the Eisenhorn books involves an Administratum world that features the use of churches (and corruption there-in).

As for the less civilized worlds....well there are Sororitas for that too.

 Psienesis wrote:
There's a whole lot of ways to whittle down that number of "one million worlds" to something in the thousands, or even fewer, and we have seen in sources that the Sisters simply aren't on every Shrine World or holy site.


And just as many ways we can whittle the number down we can offer instances that would boost that number. Honestly even if we go as low as 500,000 worlds with some kind of Ecclesiarchy presence the number of Sisters is too low to fufill the duties listed in the 6th Edition rulebook, which being the most recent information we got makes it the most accurate on what the devs are trying to do with the Sisters, and that puts a minimum of 1 per site, if not more.

We can always chalk this up to no one managing to get an official count if you'd like (ala Black Templars).
   
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ClockworkZion wrote:And let's not forget (since we keep bringing books into this) that we've got at least one book with the Ecclesiarchy on an Administratum world. If I'm recalling correctly one of the Eisenhorn books involves an Administratum world that features the use of churches (and corruption there-in).
I don't like bringing novels into this - but we don't have to. An interesting addition to the Space Marine fluff with the new 6E Codex was that there is apparently a Shrine world in Ultramar now.
Makes me really want to know more about the relationship between the Ultras and the Ecclesiarchy...
   
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On the Internet

 Lynata wrote:
ClockworkZion wrote:Well if you find something let me know so I can read it, because it may have fallen out of my brain!
Alright, had a quick glance through the pages, and indeed there is nothing I would deem "explicit" regarding the Frateris Militia. However, page 159 of the Ecclesiarchy description says the Sisters of Battle are the spearhead of a War of Faith - which to me means that there is still more to it than them.

Anecdotal evidence once more. But then again, I'm against discarding any Pre-6E fluff that is not contradicted by other GW material, anyways.


Oh I understand, I just think the Frateris Militia is only being used as a true militia at most based on what we have. However, neither of us really have anything that proves either it seems.

 Lynata wrote:
ClockworkZion wrote:It's less a point in your favor when we consider that he had to get his buddies in the Assassins to do his dirty work. He had power and friends and not everything was done by those old men.
I think there's a misunderstanding here. I am not talking about Vandire's assassins or armies at all, but Thor's militias.


You replied to the Reign of Blood bit as a point in your favor, hence my response.

 Lynata wrote:
ClockworkZion wrote:And that Crusade of Light was probably the largest riot you'll ever see outside of a Waaaaagh. It was far more massive and encompassing than the Frateris Militia ever is.
The Frateris Militia is not a single organisation, but merely a catchall term for the frenzied mobs raised by the clergy - as such, they can be as small as a dozen zealots, or as big as millions of agitated faithful. And even Sebastian Thor had to start somewhere - he didn't snap a finger and summoned billions of people from several worlds to do his bidding; his following grew over time, with every planet he visited.


Oh, I get that, I was just saying that I wouldn't really call it the Frateris Militia as much as a massive, barely controlled riot across the galaxy. Much like a Waaagh.

Thor comes across as a very level headed and cool character who didn't whip people into a frenzy but spoke and preached calmly and openly. He just managed to know what to say to have the repercussions that lead to such a massive riot. But that's just my reading of him.

 Lynata wrote:
ClockworkZion wrote:At least one Sister per holy site......just saying that the numbers are too low at a 100K or less.
I just can't agree with that assessment - call it stubbornness and a personal preference for the numbers provided. Extended protection, yes. Responsibility. But continuous physical presence? That's just not what I "grew up" with, as far as SoB fluff is concerned.

"Every major world in the Imperium belongs to one of the Cardinal Dioceses, and will therefore host at least one Ecclesiarchal cathedral and a multitude of servants, dignitaries and clerics. Such a concentration of the Ecclesiarchy's power must be defended, and so a significant force of battle sisters will be present at many such sites."[/i]
- 3E C:WH

---> Every major world, with the Battle Sisters being present on many of them. This leaves a lot of room for speculation.


I didn't grow up with any of this so that might be why I'm more open to it changing.

That said, I think GW needs to go and tack 3 more 0's on the end of any number they give because it never really fits with what they're trying to say.

 Lynata wrote:
ClockworkZion wrote:This is the same Imperium that can throw a thousand guard effortlessly at a single hill or bunker but can't get more than 100k nuns? I call BS. Or at least a bad sense of scale by the authors.
This is also the same Imperium that "can't get more than a million Space Marines".

As I said, it may not be ability, but rather unwillingness of the powers-that-be.


I'll accept that the powers that be are the ones stopping it when GW comes out and says so.

 Lynata wrote:
ClockworkZion wrote:Taking my 6 quadrillion number earlier and taking 99% away still leaves us with 60,000,000,000,000 individuals. That's 60 TRILLION for anyone who doesn't recognize a number that long.
Even then you'd still need these 6 quadrillion people to be orphans born from Imperial officials (officers and adepts) who have perfectly pure genetics and manage to not only graduate from the Schola, but graduate with top marks. Oh, and they must all be girls.
Are you sure those numbers sound realistic? It's a pretty exclusive combination of prerequisites...


Okay, so we'll say at least half (maybe a little more or a little less) of that number I gave are girls. That's ~30,000,000,000,000. Considering the Imperium we'll say maybe 5% of that number meets the criteria. That's 1,500,000,000,000 (1.5 Trillion) individuals.

The problem really comes down to the fact that the scale of the Imperium is so friggin' big that you need to start dealing with percentages like .00001 to start seeing numbers low enough to match the numbers we've been given thus far.

Oh, and as for the Orphan thing we've got an established incident where the daughter of a Rogue Trader ran away from home (so to speak) and joined a covenant of Sisters to become one. So there is precedence for women to become them in other ways it seems (it's from the first Arbites novel).


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Lynata wrote:
ClockworkZion wrote:And let's not forget (since we keep bringing books into this) that we've got at least one book with the Ecclesiarchy on an Administratum world. If I'm recalling correctly one of the Eisenhorn books involves an Administratum world that features the use of churches (and corruption there-in).
I don't like bringing novels into this - but we don't have to. An interesting addition to the Space Marine fluff with the new 6E Codex was that there is apparently a Shrine world in Ultramar now.
Makes me really want to know more about the relationship between the Ultras and the Ecclesiarchy...


We're dragging in everything else under the sun and BL has been officially stated as just as canon as every other source, so I didn't see why not to bring novels into it.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2013/09/23 22:20:16


 
   
Made in gb
Preacher of the Emperor






 Lynata wrote:
"The Battle Sisters of the Orders Militant have many strengths. They are recruited from the fastest, strongest and most adept individuals to be raised in the Schola Progenium. Their training is total, honed across the millennia to ensure that every Battle Sister is more than a match for almost any foe. Their weapons and armour are amongst the best the Adeptus Mechanicus can produce. These factors alone would make the Battle Sisters a mighty weapon in the Emperor's arsenal, but that is not all.
The Battle Sisters are utterly dedicated to the Emperor. Their one purpose is to strive for His honour and glory and to protect the Imperium from all threats. The faith of the Adepta Sororitas is unswerving, they are raised from birth to believe the Emperor is the only hope for humanity. Their pious, rigid way of life allows the Battle Sisters no room for pleasure; there is only prayer and war. There is nothing an enemy could offer them, they are impossible to bribe and totally incorruptible.
The Battle Sisters are one of the few bastions standing between humanity and extinction. The Sororitas must defeat alien dominance, rogue psykers, daemonic influence, heretics, blasphemers and apostates, or everything the Emperor has striven to build and protect will be lost."

- WD #211

(Troike: was this the quote you were looking for? *keeps trying!* )

Nope, sorry. Though it is, again, still excellent for showing the SoB mindset.

I saw it posted on /tg/, it looked like a screencap of a codex, but I'm not sure. Hopefully I'll come across it on there again someday, and can ask the person where it's from.

ClockworkZion wrote:
and BL has been officially stated as just as canon as every other source

Then where were the backflipping Terminators in the 6e Marines Codex?

Where were they, Zion?

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2013/09/23 22:28:54


Order of the Righteous Armour - 542 points so far. 
   
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 Troike wrote:
 Lynata wrote:
"The Battle Sisters of the Orders Militant have many strengths. They are recruited from the fastest, strongest and most adept individuals to be raised in the Schola Progenium. Their training is total, honed across the millennia to ensure that every Battle Sister is more than a match for almost any foe. Their weapons and armour are amongst the best the Adeptus Mechanicus can produce. These factors alone would make the Battle Sisters a mighty weapon in the Emperor's arsenal, but that is not all.
The Battle Sisters are utterly dedicated to the Emperor. Their one purpose is to strive for His honour and glory and to protect the Imperium from all threats. The faith of the Adepta Sororitas is unswerving, they are raised from birth to believe the Emperor is the only hope for humanity. Their pious, rigid way of life allows the Battle Sisters no room for pleasure; there is only prayer and war. There is nothing an enemy could offer them, they are impossible to bribe and totally incorruptible.
The Battle Sisters are one of the few bastions standing between humanity and extinction. The Sororitas must defeat alien dominance, rogue psykers, daemonic influence, heretics, blasphemers and apostates, or everything the Emperor has striven to build and protect will be lost."

- WD #211

(Troike: was this the quote you were looking for? *keeps trying!* )

Nope, sorry. Though it is, again, still excellent for showing the SoB mindset.

I saw it posted on /tg/, it looked like a screencap of a codex, but I'm not sure. Hopefully I'll come across it on there again someday, and can ask the person where it's from.

ClockworkZion wrote:
and BL has been officially stated as just as canon as every other source

Then where were the backflipping Terminators in the 6e Marines Codex?

Where were they, Zion?


They're all the dead ones.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2013/09/23 22:31:30


 
   
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Bellevue, WA

 Troike wrote:

Why? Are those years and years of hard indoctrination meaningless? And again, I'd like to point to who has the better track record at resisting Chaotic corruption. It seems that the Sororitas are the hardest to break from their mold.


Resisting chaos and having a broad range of behaviors are totally different things. Years of hard indoctrination are great at accomplishing many things, but they don't create robots either. There's a difference between "Don't worship demons because they are creatures of pure evil who want to devour your soul" and "Do not get curious and try a beer because beer is a distraction from your duties". If half of a percent of SoB are able to decide they can do their duties just fine and still have some wine now and then, you'd have some 5,000 Sisters (using the controversially low 100,000 SoB in the universe baseline) willing to have a drink now and then. I'm not even claiming the number is that high, but I would certainly be surprised if NO SoB allowed distractions to slip into their lives and thoughts.

 Troike wrote:

See, this is the problem you're having. You're still thinking of the Sisters as normal humans, and thinking that the post-human status of the Astartes makes them automatically less expressive and emotive.


Yes, that is correct. At least, fluff indicates that the Astartes are both modified to experience limited emotions and are all fairly close genetically and behaviorally.

 Troike wrote:

Okay, and how does Chaotic corruption work? It latches onto those things, yes? And who has the better track record at resisting Chaos?


I don't think chaos functions by latching onto healthy emotional states, it latches onto denied, twisted and confused emotional states. I think the Sisters are trained from birth to recognize and avoid the temptations of chaos, and are very good at avoiding it. I certainly think some portion are capable of interacting normally with the world without falling to chaos. If Joe the Imperial plumber can drink and lust without falling to Slaanesh, I am sure a Sister Superior could manage it.

 Troike wrote:

And the SoB have had a black sheep of sorts, Sister Miriya, form the James Swallow books. However, whilst she was something of a maverick, willing to go against orders, it was still all in the service of her dogmas. She still had the Sororitas mindset, being disapproving of things considered "deviant". Her every major action was still in service to the Emperor, not herself. I think that she is a far more accurate depcition of what a Sororitas "black sheep" would look like.


I'm not sure it is entirely clear what Sisters view as deviant and what they view as simply a distraction, or beneath them. Catholic imagery aside, they are not Catholics. Sister Miriya goes against direct orders, makes moves against the Church itself, and makes numerous breaks with the chain of command that a militaristic sect of fanatics might find far more meaningfully treacherous and deviant than drinking to excess.

 Lynata wrote:
Holloman wrote:Nothing about drinking, fighting and carousing makes Space Wolves fundamentally more human - they just share a few behaviors with normal humans.
I'm fairly sure you just contradicted yourself here


I don't think so. Orks spend all their time drinking, carousing and fighting too, but that does not make them human in any meaningful sense. Nor is my cat human because he likes to bathe. Space Wolves fight and drink because it is their nature to fight and drink, passed down by the carefully protected genes of their Primarch and the history of their people. If a Space Wolf joined a monastic order and dedicated his life to humble appreciation of art history, that would indicate a surprising degree of human flexibility for a Space Wolf. Chugging a tankard of beer and slugging someone is just an SW doing an innate thing some normal humans also do.


 Lynata wrote:
Hollowman wrote:Marines gave a more constrained set of reactions - they don't respond the way humans do to a variety of things according to GW. The Sisters have a superior range of behavior and are more adaptable than the astartes
Not according to GW.


Not according to the fluff I have read on Space marines.


 Lynata wrote:
Hollowman wrote:It would be a lot more accurate to say internal forces curbed the success of such measures - we are terrible subjects for such things.
I disagree - I think we are terrible subjects due to our "vulnerability" to outside influence. This is almost a sociopolitical topic that may have less to do with what we're talking about, though, as much as I think it might be interesting for a thread or PM discussion on its own.


Well, how good we are as subjects I suppose depends on what we have for comparison - we are better than cats but worse than dogs, which isn't saying all that much in the scheme of things. There are very clear limits to how far we can be pulled from our basic set point, however. But yeah, that is a whole other topic.
   
Made in us
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West Michigan, deep in Whitebread, USA

I think the moral of the story is that some people like to play a "happy medium" human army between the Elite Space Marines, and Horde Imperial Guard.

That is the Sisters. The army has the ability to be supported by the wonderful 3+ that is power armor, but has a different play style than Space Marines, and also tends to be more unique-looking to play against than the armored supermen that show up on what seems like every 40K gaming table you come across, sometimes on both sides.

The other benefit is that they are another Imperial faction that doesn't look odd fighting other Imperial factions, for fluff reasons.

It's the same reasoning as "Why should GW have Dark Eldar, there's already an Eldar army to play". Because variety.



"By this point I'm convinced 100% that every single race in the 40k universe have somehow tapped into the ork ability to just have their tech work because they think it should."  
   
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 Hollowman wrote:
Resisting chaos and having a broad range of behaviors are totally different things. Years of hard indoctrination are great at accomplishing many things, but they don't create robots either. There's a difference between "Don't worship demons because they are creatures of pure evil who want to devour your soul" and "Do not get curious and try a beer because beer is a distraction from your duties". If half of a percent of SoB are able to decide they can do their duties just fine and still have some wine now and then, you'd have some 5,000 Sisters (using the controversially low 100,000 SoB in the universe baseline) willing to have a drink now and then. I'm not even claiming the number is that high, but I would certainly be surprised if NO SoB allowed distractions to slip into their lives and thoughts.

Eh, can't say I agree. If a person believes in their cause enough to resist a Nurgle plague, deprives themselves of all worldly pleasures to pray and train every day, and will gladly volunteer themselves to go charge at their enemies wearing only rags if they think they've failed in any way, are they really going to falter at being offered a pint? Not to mention the quote above specifuically saying that their lives leave no room for pleasure, which itself goes against that Cain Sister.

 Hollowman wrote:
fluff indicates that the Astartes are both modified to experience limited emotions and are all fairly close genetically and behaviorally.

I'd disagree with that, actually. In the fluff we have: The joval, rowdy Space Wolves (Lukas being a major example) the haughty, arrogant Marines Malevolent, the stoic Iron Hands, the bloodthirsty Flesh Tearers... The chapters of the Astartes do exhibit a wide range of temperments and personalities.

 Hollowman wrote:
I don't think chaos functions by latching onto healthy emotional states, it latches onto denied, twisted and confused emotional states.

It can be more or less any emotional state, really. All four gods together cover a very wide range of emotions. The Sisters have faced them all, but Chaos is always hard-pressed to find an opening past all of that indoctrination.

 Hollowman wrote:
I certainly think some portion are capable of interacting normally with the world without falling to chaos.

Veering into a whole other topic, but still interesting enough to mention. I'm not sure that they would. Note the extreme isolation of the Sisters. They get indoctrinated in the Progenium, before being shipped of to an order to live in isolation and pray and train every day until there's a war. I think that they would interact okay with other Sisters or somebody suitably poius, but if they were to spend time with, say, some jaded Guardsmen, they would be probably be offended by their lack of piety, and would certainly find it hard to interact successfully.

 Hollowman wrote:
If Joe the Imperial plumber can drink and lust without falling to Slaanesh

Right, but Joe wouldn't be at risk if Chaos wasn't on his world. If some local Slaaneshi cultists were able to summon in some Daemons, Joe would be a Slaaneshi groupie in no time. Or possessed.

 Hollowman wrote:
I'm not sure it is entirely clear what Sisters view as deviant and what they view as simply a distraction, or beneath them.

Going off of the studio fluff Lynat posted ITT, basically everything that's not in service to the Emperor. I'd imagine that, givin the rigidity and zeal of the Orders Militant, they wouldn't make a whole lot of distinction between "deviant" and "simply a distraction". Anybody who broke from their rigid routines even slightly would likely be viewed as a deviant.

 Hollowman wrote:
Sister Miriya goes against direct orders, makes moves against the Church itself, and makes numerous breaks with the chain of command that a militaristic sect of fanatics might find far more meaningfully treacherous and deviant than drinking to excess.

The reason she was spared is that her Canoness likely saw that her intentions were good, and still very much in service to the Emperor. So, she got a demotion instead of a swift bolt to the head. Drinking, meanwhile, would certainly not be in service to the Emperor, but an act of pure slef-indulgence. And, in fairness, the local Ecclesiarchy did want Miriya killed instead.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2013/09/24 00:26:45


Order of the Righteous Armour - 542 points so far. 
   
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So a friend and I sat down and decided to crunch some numbers. For the purposes of the exercise we lowballed most of these numbers to try and feel out a lower limit on things. The goal was to work out how many Sororitas there where.

To keep the numbers reasonably low we worked off the following rules:

1% of the entire Imperium meets the very basic criteria to be considered for becoming a Sororitas.
1% of those complete their "basic" training successfully
1% of those are on active status at any time (the other 99% have been deactivated for any number of reasons). This last one was to really just push the number a lot lower based on the "gak happens" quotient.
50% of the final total is Militant Orders, the rest is divided into the various Non-Militant Orders (which makes each of those smaller than the combined Militant Orders).

So running some basic numbers we figured that from the Hive Worlds (all 32,380 of them) had a rough average of 50,000,000,000 (we went with 50 Billion a Hive, which is about the middle of the range (10-100,000,000,000), and 10 Hive a planet, which is a bit lower than half as the range is 5-20) 16,190,000,000,000,000 people on the hives.

To keep the math easy we went with an average of 5 Billion people on average on every other planet in the Imperium (working from 1,000,000 that means 967,620 worlds) which is lower than our current population on Earth. That gave us another 4,838,100,000,000,000 more people.

This gave us a total of 21,028,100,000,000,000 people in the Imperium on a lowball math run.

Of these 210,281,000,000,000 meet the very basic criteria.
Of those 2,102,810,000,000 complete the basic training.
Of those 21,028,100,000 are on any kind of active duty.
Of those 10,514,050,000 are Battle Sisters.

So either the Sisters have some insanely high attrition rate that exceeds even the Imperial Guard, or they are HORRIBLY mismanaging potential resources if they only have 100k Sisters running around because from the numbers we ran they should have more people than we have on Earth RIGHT NOW.

And for the record, this is assuming that only 1 in a Million people have what it takes to be a Sister of Battle out of a Scholera. Still pretty damned elite sounding to me.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2013/09/24 00:38:56


 
   
Made in gb
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Wow. I always thought that the numbers sounded a little low, but that's something else. And that was with very conservative maths, apparently. Gah, now I'm really uneasy with the numbers, again.

As I've said, I wouldn't mind them getting retconned up in numbers next codex. But the established numbers are still right there in the rulebook, so I think it's something that GW is going to stick to. But, as always, I'm very interested to hear what a new codex would have to say about it. Maybe it'll surprise us?


Order of the Righteous Armour - 542 points so far. 
   
 
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